1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document generation apparatus, method, and storage medium for generating a document on which retrieved data are laid out.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, as a technique for executing form generation processing, a technique for generating print data by merging data registered in a database with form template data that represents the design of a form is known (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 05-150920). This technique is used not only for forms such as account books, slips, and the like, but also for generation of various documents.
Data on a database used upon generating a document by merging with layout information indicating the design of a document are often not steady. Normally, the database allows to register, update, and delete data, and data may change constantly.
That is, the contents of data retrieved based on condition settings associated with data retrieval change depending on the generation timings of documents, and a document to be generated finally may have a result different from the previously output document.
For example, upon generation of a document that records a sales result, by setting a condition required to retrieve data of that day, which are always output from the database, a document that records the output sales of that day can be obtained. In this way, there are needs for acquiring documents that always record latest data.
On the other hand, as described above, the user, who browses a certain document, often wants to acquire a document configured by different data on a database in association with the document that he or she is browsing. Different data on the database include latest data at that time and the like.
In such case, conventionally, the user needs to search for template data used to generate the document that he or she is browsing, and data that describes the data retrieval source, retrieval condition, and retrieved data contents, and to generate a new document by designating these data. It takes much time to search various template data and various data that describe the data retrieval sources, retrieval conditions, and retrieved data contents for those which are associated with the data that the user is browsing, resulting in poor efficiency.